Part One...File 6 of 7

11. MODERN VERSIONS & TRANSLATORS

Most, if not all, modern translations are based on
the Revised Version (1881-5) which,as we have already
learned, was influenced throughout by the Alexandrian manuscripts
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. In effect there really
are only Two English language Bibles to choose from.

The King James Version: which
is based on the Masoretic Hebrew Text and the Majority Greek Text.

The Revised Version: which
is based on the Minority Text. This version has spawned a whole
generation of inaccurate translations: which, like their unholy
mother the RV, all rely heavily on the corrupt Minority Text.

I list a few of the 100+ modern Bibles which
followed in the trail of the Revised Version of 1881-5:

As Samuel Gipp so succinctly puts it: "All
modern translations, such as the New American Standard Version,
are linked to the Revised Version of 1952, which is a revision
of the American Standard Version, an American creation growing
from the English Revised Version of 1881."(Ref:
B11)

It is true that many of the Revised Version's (RV)
committee members were godly scholars: but they cannot be compared
with the King James Version's committee when it comes to extreme
reverence for the Word of God. W Scott, writing over 100
years ago, makes this enlightening comment concerning the RV committee.

Quote:

"The movement for a revision of the authorised
version of the Holy Scriptures commenced on May 6,1870, in the
Convocation of Canterbury. An influential committee was at once
formed, consisting mainly of distinguished scholars and divines
within the pale of the Established Church, but with power to consult
or add to their number eminent Biblical scholars of all denominations.
Many of its members were truly eminent for godliness and of distinguished
ability, but it may be gravely questioned whether the constitution
of the Committee as a whole may be compared with that nominated
by King James, for piety and extreme reverence for the Word of
God." (Ref: A9)

Sad to say the revision committee when faced with
a choice between trustworthy Textus Receptus and the corrupt Sinaiticus
and Vaticanus, usually chose the corrupt Egyptian manuscripts.
To be sure the Egyptian codices, written on vellum, were in far
better physical condition than the papyrus or parchment
MSS. But beauty, as pointed out earlier, is no indication of character.
In Part Two we will examine some 80+ texts which have been
seriously corrupted by these Egyptian codices. Two of the revision
committee's most prominent translators were:

Westcott was a Cambridge
scholar who played a leading role in the production of the Revised
Version. A very brief look at this man's spiritual standing is
sufficient to tell us that the Almighty would never have used
him in the preservation of His Word. Before anyone blindly
accepts Westcott's decisions, he/she should consider what
this man believed. The following statements by Westcott, (from
the book Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott) are
quoted in William Grady's book Final Authority:

"I never read of the account of a miracle
but I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and discover
some want of evidence in the account of it." (page
216)

"Oh the weakness of my faith compared
with that of others! So wild, so sceptical am I. I cannot yield."
(page 217)

"O Marie , (his
wife's name) as I wrote the last word, I could not help asking
what am I? Can I claim to be a believer?" (page 217)

"It seems as if I am inclined to learn
nothing; I must find out all myself, and then I am satisfied,
but that simple faith and obedience which so many enjoy, I fear
will never be mine." (page 217)

"If you make a decided conviction of
the absolute infallibility of the N.T. practically
a sine qua non for co-operation, I fear I could not join you,
even if you were willing to forget your fears about the origin
of the Gospels." (page 230)

Rev. Gipp has this to
say about Westcott:

Quote:

"We have in Brooke Foss Westcott a
man who believed in communal living; a man who believed that the
second coming of Christ was spiritual, heaven was a state of the
mind, prayers for the dead were permissible in private devotions,
and that Christ came to bring peace through international disarmament.
He believed in purgatory and admiration for Mary, and he thought
the Bible was like any other book. This is the man who walked
into the Revision Committee and sat in judgement of our Bible.
He thought he saw room for improvement in the Authorized Version
and offered a pro-Roman Greek text with which to correct it. The
ironic thing is that Bible-believing Christians, educators and
preachers, who would never agree with his theology, have for years
exalted his opinion of the Greek as nearly infallible. These
facts alone should be reason enough to condemn Westcott and Hort,
their Greek Text and the MSS which they used to arrive at such
a text. But let us look at their actions concerning the molesting
of the pure words of the King James Bible, in favour of Rome.
Saddest of all, we have in Brooke Foss Westcott a man who neither
believed in salvation by grace nor ever experienced it. There
is no record in his 'Life and Letters' that he ever accepted Christ
as his personal Saviour." (Ref: B9)

We can see from these quotations that Brooke Foss
Westcott wasn't really a believer in the Almighty or in His inspired
Scriptures. By his own admission he was a sceptic who
doubted the infallibility of the New Testament and the miracles
of Jesus. He was unable to give up the scepticism and unbelief
that stormed his mind. He totally rejected the infallibility of
Scripture and confessed that simple faith would never be his.
These are warning signals! You ignore them at your peril!

Hort was another leading translator of the Revised
Version. Most of the other committee members were unfamiliar with
the methods of textual criticism and dynamic equivalence which
Westcott and Hort introduced to get their way. Besides, and this
is a fact we all do well to remember, Westcott and Hort were theistic
evolutionists. To them the Genesis account of creation was
absolutely unacceptable. Darwin's book on the Origin of the
Species was more to their liking.

David Fuller writes:

"Textual criticism cannot be divorced entirely from
theology. No matter how great a Greek scholar a man may be, or
no matter how great an authority on the textual evidence, his
conclusions must always be open to suspicion if he does not accept
the Bible as the very Word of God."(Ref: F2)

A quick look at what Hort wrote will leave one in
no doubt but that he disbelieved the most basic Bible doctrine,
that the universe was created by God in six literal days.
He was also an ardent admirer of the Roman Church. Indeed only
recently (October 1996) Pope John Paul 11 declared that
"

Quote:

Today new discoveries lead one to acknowledge in the
theory of evolution more than a hypothesis The convergence,
of results of work done independently one from the other, constitutes
a significant argument in favour of this theory."
However, he added, "The soul was created directly by
God."

You may be sure that very soon the entire Roman
Catholic Church will be following the Pope's lead in rejecting
the Biblical account of the creation.

Hort believed in the evolutionary theory over a century
ago. Here are a few statements of his from the Life and Letters
of Fenton John Anthony Hort taken from page 223 of
the book Which Bible?

"Have you read Darwin? How
I should like to talk with you (Westcott) about it! In spite of
difficulties, I am inclined to think it unanswerable. In
any case it is a treat to read such a book."

"But the book which has most engaged
me is Darwin. Whatever may be thought of it, it is a book
that one is proud to be contemporary with. I must work out and
examine the argument more in detail, but at present my feeling
is strong that the theory is unanswerable."

Dr Frederick Maurice was an avowed heretic who
instilled in Hort a love for the homosexual Greek philosophers
Plato and Aristotle. Hort writes of Maurice as follows: "He
urged me to give the greatest attention to the Plato and
Aristotle, and to make them the central points of my reading."

" Anglicanism, though by no
means without a sound standing, seems a poor and maimed thing
beside great Rome."

In his book Defending the King James Bible Rev.D.A.
Waite, Th.D, Ph.D writes on page 41 as follows:

Quote:

"The Westcott and Hort Text changes the Textus
Receptus in over 5,600 places My own personal count, as at
August 2, 1984, using the Scrivener's GREEK NEW TESTAMENT referred
to above, was 5,604changes that Westcott and Hort made to the
Textus Receptus in their own Greek New Testament text. Of these,
5604 alterations, I found 1,952 omissions (35%), 467 to be additions
(8%), and 3185 to be changes (57%). In these 5604 places that
were involved in these alterations, there were 4,366 more words
included, making a total of 9970 Greek words that were involved.
This means that in a Greek Text of 647 pages (such as Scrivener's
text) this would average 15.4 words per page that were changed
from the Received Text." (Ref: Q1)

Dr Henry M Morris, a founding
father of the Institute for Creation Research, USA, made
these telling comments concerning modern translators.

Quote:

"As far as the Hebrew text developed by Rudolph
Kittel is concerned, it is worth noting that Kittel was a
German rationalist higher critic, rejecting Biblical inerrancy
and firmly devoted to evolutionism. The men most responsible
for alterations in the New Testament text were B.F.Westcott and
F.J.A.Hort, whose Greek New Testament was largely updated by Eberhard
Nestle and Kurt Aland. All these men were evolutionists.
Furthermore, Westcott and Hort denied Biblical inerrance and promoted
spiritism and racism. Nestle and Aland, like Kittel, were German
theological sceptics.

Westcott and Hort were also the most influential
members of the English revision committee which produced the English
Revised Version of the Bible. The corresponding American revision
committee which developed the American Standard Version of 1901
was headed by another liberal evolutionist, Philip Schaff. Most
new versions since that time have adopted the same presuppositions
as those of the 19th century revisers

So one of the serious problems with most modern
English translations is that they rely heavily on Hebrew and Greek
manuscripts of the Bible developed by liberals, rationalists
and evolutionists, none of whom believed in the verbal inspiration
of the Bible. Is this how God would preserve His word? Would
he not more likely have used devout scholars who believed in the
absolute inerrancy and authority of the Bible?

I believe therefore, after studying the, teaching
and loving the Bible for over 55 years, that Christians - especially
creationists - need to hang on to their old King James Bibles
as long as they live. God has uniquely blessed its use in the
great revivals, in the world-wide missionary movement and in the
personal lives of believers, more so than He has with all the
rest of the versions put together, and 'by their fruits
ye shall know them' (Matthew 7:20). It is the most beautiful,
most powerful and (I strongly believe), the most reliable of any
that we have or ever will have, until Christ returns. "
(Ref:N1)

Few Protestants know that the Revised Standard Version
(RSV) committee had Roman Catholic members on it: or that the
RSV is the preferred choice of the Roman Church. I quote from
the preface of this Bible:

Quote:

"The Revised Standard Version Bible committee
is a continuing body, holding its meetings at regular intervals.
It has become both ecumenical and international, with
Protestant and Catholic active members who come
from Great Britain, Canada and the United States."

Since most of the citations in the 1994 Catechismof the Catholic Church, the first update of
this catechism in some 400 years, are from the RSV, we can safely
say that this translation has virtually become the official version
of the Roman Church. In effect, the aim of the translators is
ecumenical. They want all the churches, yea all religions,
to unite under one supreme authority - the Pope! Several
on the RSV committee regard the Scriptures as being on an equal
footing as church TRADITION: for this is - and always has
been - the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The RSV committee,
in other words, is vastly different from the Protestant committee
which produced the King James Version. They are as different as
chalk is from cheese. A brief look at some of the members of the
RSV committee is startling to say the least. The following quotes
are taken from Rev. Gipp's book An Understandable History of
the Bible:

"Edgar Goodspeed was on the Revised
Standard committee. Goodspeed did not believe in the deity of
Jesus Christ. He looked at Jesus as a social reformer who gave
his life as a martyr for a 'cause ' Goodspeed called Genesis
the product of an 'Oriental story teller at his best.' "
(page 197-198)

"Julius Brewer, another
reviser, stated, 'The dates and figures found in the first five
books of the Bible turn out to be altogether unreliable.' "
(page 199)

"Henry Cadbury,
another member of the Revised committee, believed that Jesus Christ
was a just man who was subject to story telling. 'He was given
to overstatements, in his case, not a personal idiosyncrasy, but
a characteristic of the Oriental world.' " (page
199)

"Walter Bowie was
another revisor who believed that the Old Testament was legend
instead of fact. He says in reference to Abraham, 'The story of
Abraham comes down from ancient times; and how much of it is fact
and how much of it is legend, no one can positively tell.' "
(page 199)

"Clarence Craig
was one of the revisers who denied the bodily resurrection of
Christ. 'It is to be remembered there were no eye witnesses of
the resurrection of Jesus. No canonical gospel presumed to describe
Jesus emerging from the tomb. The mere fact that a tomb was found
empty was capable of many explanations. The very last one that
would be credible to a modern man would be the explanation of
a physical resurrection of the body.' " (page
200)

"William Sperry shows
his dislike for the gospel of John in the following statement.
'Some of these sayings, it is true, come from the Fourth Gospel
(John), and we do not press that gospel for too great verbal accuracy
in its record of the sayings of Jesus.' " (page
201)

"William Irwin believed
that the Jewish prophets inflated the position of God in the Bible.
'The prophets were forced by the disasters that befell to do some
hard, painful thinking. They were forced by the history of their
own times to revise their messages again and again in order to
keep up with the progress of the age. The Assyrians and the Babylonians
forced them to revise their conception of Yahweh from time to
time until they finally made Him God of the universe.' "
(page 201)

"Fleming James doubted
the miracle of the Red Sea crossing. 'What really happened at
the Red Sea WE CAN NO LONGER KNOW; but scholars are pretty well
agreed that the narrative goes back to some striking and pretentious
event which impressed Moses and the people with the belief that
Yahweh had intervened to save them. The same may be said of the
account of the plagues.' Concerning Elijah's action in 2 Kings
1:10, he said, 'The narrative of calling down fire from heaven
upon soldiers sent to arrest him is plainly legendary.' " (page
201-202)

Some Christians flatly refuse to take account of
these facts. They contemptuously brush them aside as false
or irrelevant. But these are facts which can be proved and should
not be ignored. They are well documented statements and they are
vital. In them we can see, and that very clearly, that the leading
and most influential members of the Revision committee were confessed
unbelievers.

They did not believe in the very fundamentals
of the Christian faith: the creation account in Genesis,
the account of the Exodus, the miracles of the prophets,
the divinity of Jesus and his resurrection etc.

They selected hopelessly corrupt manuscripts
which cast doubt on the time-honoured King James Version.

They have conflicting religious beliefs: some
are Protestants and others are Roman Catholics

They have one aim - to unite all the churches.

How should Protestants who believe in the
divine inspiration and preservation of Scripture
evaluate this committee's work? I answer without hesitation:
With grave suspicion! JEHOVAH the Holy One of Israel,
who initially gave us the Scriptures through His prophets and
apostles of old, who carefully selected the King James Version
translators on the basis of their faith and linguistic
ability and has since blessed His Word for some 400 years,
would certainly never, never change His methods and use translators
who reject basic Bible doctrines such as the creation account
in Genesis. Would the Almighty, who claims never to change
(Malachi 3:6), now use unbelievers to re-translate the
Bible? The very idea is preposterous, if not blasphemous. I
am still aghast that it took me so long to learn these facts.
I am even more astounded when Christians, who are given this information,
continue to hold to their modern Bibles.

"Even the jots and tittles
of the Bible are important. God has pronounced terrible woes upon
the man who adds or takes away from the volume of inspiration.
The Revisers apparently felt no constraint on this point, for
they made 36,000 changes in the English of the King James Version,
and very nearly 6,000 in the Greek Text. Dr Ellicott, in submitting
the Revised Version to the Southern Convocation in 1881, declared
that they had made between eight and nine changes in every five
verses, and in about every ten verses three of these were made
for critical purposes. And for most of these changes the Vatican
and SinaiticManuscripts are responsible. As Canon Cook
says: 'By far the greatest number of innovations, including those
which give the severest shocks to our minds, are adopted on the
authority of two manuscripts, or even on one manuscript,
against the distinct testimony of all other manuscripts, uncial
and cursive' The Vatican Codex sometimes alone,
generally in accord with the Sinaitic, is responsible for nine-tenths
of the most striking innovations in the Revised Version

There is a case where a little means much. 'If
one wonders whether it is worth while' says Dr Robertson, speaking
of the Revision, 'he must bear in mind that some of the passages
in dispute are of great importance.' The Bible should more probably
be compared to a living organism. Touch a part and you spoil it
all. To cut a vital artery in a man might be touching a
very small point, but death would come as truly as if he were
blown to pieces." (Ref:
F4)

Every word in Scripture is important: infinitely
more important than a bolt or rivet in a jet airliner; or a line
of code in a life-saving computer program. If His Father's words
were that important to our Saviour, yea every jot and tittle,
how much more should they be to us in these end times.

Matthew 4:4

But he (Jesus) answered
and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Matthew 5:18

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from
the law, till all be fulfilled.

Revelation 22:18-19

For I testify unto every man that heareth the
words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add
unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that
are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from
the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his
part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from
the things which are written in this book.

Yes, God's words are important - vitally important. A translator must, therefore, translate God's words - all of them - and not assume that he understands the Almighty's thoughts and can change or delete the divine words to reflect what he thinks God meant.
The King James Version translators employed a 'word for word' translation technique. That is, they translated each Hebrew and Greek word as closely as possible into its English equivalent. Modern translators chose a vastly different method called 'dynamic equivalence.' Using this method the translator primarily endeavours to carry forward 'God's thoughts and intentions' without paying too much attention to His actual words. Using 'dynamic equivalence' in hundreds yea thousands of places, the modern translators have changed the very 'words of God' and replaced them with what, they think,God meant. In effect, dynamic equivalence is not true translation, but interpretation or paraphrase.

Writing in his highly recommended book Defending the King James Bible, Rev. D.A.Waite writes on page 105:

Quote:

"A paraphrase makes no effort to carry over or translate the words of one language into the words of another language but rather to 're-state, interpret or translate with latitude.' Since this is the object of a paraphrase there's no assurance of fidelity in carrying-over exactly what is there in one language - no more and no less - into the other language, no more and no less. Therefore, paraphrase takes great liberty in doing any of these three things or all of them: ADDING words, phrases, ideas, thoughts or meanings; SUBTRACTING words, phrases, ideas, thoughts or meanings; or CHANGING words, phrases, ideas, thoughts or meanings. That is the essence of paraphrase, that is the essence of dynamic equivalence. So it is commentary, it is interpretation, it is not translation." (Ref: Q2)

We have seen that Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus
are corrupt and unholy manuscripts; that
they were the work of unbelieving Egyptian scribes who amended,
added to and deleted many portions of the true text and then palmed
off their work as the Word of God. These manuscripts were
then taken up by sceptical translators, who didn't believe
that the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God, to spawn a
whole generation of new translations.

With these sobering facts in mind let us now consider
a Biblical principle of which comparatively few Christians know
anything. It concerns SPIRITUAL POLLUTION,of how something unholy can pollute everything it touches.
This little-known principle is described in the following passage:

Haggai 2:11

Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask
now the priests concerning the law, saying,
12 If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his
garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine,
or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered
and said, No.
13 Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean
by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the
priests answered and said, It shall be unclean.

What does this symbolic drama, involving dedicated
meat, bread and wine becoming unclean if touched by an unclean
person, mean? What spiritual truth is the Almighty trying to put
across in this passage? The answer, I believe, is as follows:

At its basic physical level it means that
if an ancient Israelite believer, whilst carrying his consecrated
tithes (flesh, bread, wine or oil) to the Temple, happened to
come in contact with an unclean person (a leper or corpse for
example) his offering would lose its holiness and would become
unacceptable to God. It's like pure meat being infected with
a disease virus: or like a cup of tea being polluted by a fly:
or a computer hard disk being infected by a virus-laden floppy.
In other words: unclean and unholy people or things pollute
whatever they touch.

At its higher spiritual level it means that
any sacred offering (prayer, charitable gift or act of worship)
becomes unacceptable to God if the unholy element of unbelief
motivates it.

Does this spiritual principle, that diseased things
pollute everything they touch, apply to Bible translations? I'm
certain it does. TheBible is the Bread of Life, the
strong spiritual meat for the soul. It canalsobecome spiritually unholy, unclean and unacceptable to God
if its words are infected by the unbelief of a scribe or translator
or twisted out of context by the leprous spirit of Satan. That
is exactly what happened to the holy manuscripts which were carried
down to Egypt.

First: the holy texts were corrupted by unbelieving
scribes who did not recognise their divine origin .
As far as they were concerned the Scriptures were merely the writings
of a religious group called Christians based initially in Jerusalem
and Antioch. Thus, in the process of copying, Codices Sinaiticus
and Vaticanus were corrupted in hundreds of places with
deletions, additions and alterations, till they themselves became
unholy, unclean and unacceptable to God.

Second: we see
many unbelieving translators daring to use those corrupt codices
to translate the Word of God: men who rejected the fact that
every word of Scripture is God-breathed and, therefore,
absolutely true. Always bear in mind that these men were professed
unbelievers and evolutionists.

And so the high-level spiritual lesson of Haggai
2:11-13 has become a living reality in these last days.

FIRST:
the sacred texts were corrupted by unbelieving Egyptian copyists
and SECOND: unbelieving modern translators used those corrupt
manuscripts to complete their work. The end product is the deluge
of unholy modern Bible versions on sale today. That is why we should never refer
to modern translations as "Holy Bibles" because
they are far from holy: and most certainly the Spirit of the
Holy One of Israel was not involved in their production. They
are unholy counterfeits posing as the Word of God!

We ignore
those two facts at our peril. Indeed, these are the two main reasons
why I have set aside all modern English translations of the Bible
and have returned to the King James Version, first published in 1611.